February 13, 2010

I hope I didn't shave a patch on my chest for nothing

Screaming and kicking through middle age and all the glory that comes with it, I'm taking on the battle against declining metabolism by determining what constitutes a healthy day versus a sedentary-eat-and-ravage-vending-machines day, I've combined a few simple tools and will call on the generosity of friends for the data processing. My simple Polar T1 heart monitor strap (about $50 with wrist monitor) coupled to an Oregon Scientific SmartSync datalogger from Amazon for about $13 (incl shipping -deal!) makes for the perfect tool set with which to wrest the data.

Above is a sample of my heart rate log from about noon to about 3 hours later yesterday; I became obsessed with this (surprise) and took a half day. Obviously, I started out at the gym. I did an interval cardio workout (high heart rate / low heart rate intermittently for about 35 minutes and then a bit of resistance training (to impress the babes) - all about an hour. Then, I took a leisurely remaining couple hours window shopping in thrift stores and then home, where I lost my wireless connection (some logistics to work out).

This was a trial period to see if the logger works. What I plan to do is: assuming my baseline to be about 60-64 beats per minute, I'll make measurments during the middle of the day, 6-8 hours worth, while sedentary (elevator, deskwork, mid-day narcoleptic fits, etc.) followed by several days of taking stairs, parking way far away in parking lots, brisk walks, etc.; simply going out of my way to keep up my heartrate during daily activities and compare the two trials average beats per minute to see how much benefit there is to the daily grind in differnt forms. Weekend mania will always be an outlier and won't be measured.

For data-supported conclusions, I will be calling on my more mathematically inclined better half who laughs at such trivial manipulation of the *.csv files to deliver the numbers.

Should be fun. My chest looks really odd. Thank goodness males do not speak to each other in gym locker rooms.

When I went in for my Radioactive Man heart monitoring, the nurse asked me to pull up my shirt so she could attach the electrodes. When I displayed my pale sasquatch-like torso, her exact words were, "Oh, dear."